ICO Analysis: Much Ado About OneGram

ICO Analysis: Much Ado About OneGram

Hacked received a tip about an upcoming ICO called OneGram. We began our investigation and immediately noticed more than one red flag. Some digging revealed more concern. This report is not meant to be a condemnation of OneGram, and certainly not a warning against alternative money systems that comply with religious convictions around the world. Instead, it is a factual warning based on long experience in cryptocurrency, which has long been unfortunately rife with get rich quick schemes, scams, and bad actors.

First things first, there are three entities involved in OneGram, which claims to back every token on its blockchain with a single gram of gold, currently valued around $40. The first entity is OneGram itself, and it is closely related to Gold Guard, a separate firm which will handle the ICO and gold transactions through a firm through Australian-based ABX (Allocated Bullion Exchange). The information on the Gold Guard page led one to believe that the firm had been operating in the Dubai free zone for ten years or so, but this was answered by their CEO as being a misunderstanding on the part of the writer. Instead, the firm is going to be contracting through ABX to acquire the gold grams. This was a red flag to the writer for obvious reasons: so you’ve created another entity to create the appearance of a safe partnership, your opening price is $40 whereas most ICOs open in far lower figures.

The $40 valuation is tied directly to the exchange value of gold at time of launch, but the price of gold will not necessarily determine the value of OneGram tokens. This doesn’t necessarily make a lot of sense, since a gold-backed currency’s value is actually directly tied to the global price of gold indefinitely. The CEO said, via phone (after a very suspiciously-bot-sounding receptionist was eventually hung up on and the CEO returned the call), something to the effect of, “Well, of course we can’t guarantee the market. It could go either way.” Effectively, this would mean that if the price of gold dropped, a OneGram holder would have to wait for the market itself to drop in order to cash out – they would not be able to acquire more gold as a result of the loss in value.

The idea is not to be able to hold and speculate on digital gold certificates, but rather have a digital ledger, Shariah compliant, which has some allegedly inherent value.

According to the CEO, who said his name was Abrahim Mohammed and promised this writer some additional information including photographs of a meeting with ABX people but then did not deliver over the next 48 hours, when someone decides to actually call in their gold certificates for the grams of gold, the coins on the blockchain related to those grams will be destroyed. This is perhaps the one really unique and advantageous aspect of OneGram: it would seem that overtime the supply will be further limited, and within reason this can mean a more valuable token than the grams of gold themselves.

Yet, still, there does not seem to be enough transparency. At this time we cannot fully analyze the currency due to the lack of known entities, clear evidence of legitimate practices, and the like. Handing the actual acquisition and gold transfer services off to ABX seems a good move, and for what it’s worth ABX Global appears to be a legitimate company formed in 2011. Due to all the uncertainty and as yet not great informational issues regarding OneGold, we have to advise against any investment at current time.Gold scams are much too common and have been going on for so long that a new gold venture must almost prove that it is not a scam before getting any sort of basic accreditation from journalists and investors alike. This issue will be revisited when more information has been gathered over the coming weeks.

Important: Never invest (trade with) money you can't afford to comfortably lose. Always do your own research and due diligence before placing a trade. Read our Terms & Conditions here. Trade recommendations and analysis are written by our analysts which might have different opinions. Read my 6 Golden Steps to Financial Freedom here. Best regards, Jonas Borchgrevink.

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5 stars on average, based on 1 rated postsP. H. Madore has covered the cryptocurrency beat over the course of hundreds of articles for Hacked's sister site, CryptoCoinsNews, as well as some of her competitors. He is a major contributing developer to the Woodcoin project, and has made technical contributions on a number of other cryptocurrency projects. In spare time, he recently began a more personalized, weekly newsletter at http://ico.phm.link

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1 Comment

1 Comment

majykman

May 21, 2017 at 5:11 pm

We have the opportunity to do a live interview with them and address things properly. Are you interested in doing this or submitting the questions to me? (That I could try and ask for all potential investors to get clarity.)

Leave a Reply

ICO Analysis: Solve.Care

The stated mission of Solve.Care is to “Make health care and benefits programs work better for everyone.” Solve.Care aims to improve security and privacy while also improving access and accountability in a manner that current centralized systems cannot accomplish.

Solve.Care’s platform intends to vastly improve the administration of benefits and the coordination of care. By using blockchain technology, the company seeks to reduce the costs within the current healthcare system by replacing systems which are duplicated while automating many processes that are currently being done manually. In turn, this will greatly reduce fraud, abuse, and waste by ensuring accountability and transparency.

According to the whitepaper, the platform will coordinate and simplify the interactions between healthcare providers/facilities, pharmacies, government agencies and insurance companies on a global scale. Every transaction that happens in Solve.Care is immutable, instantly verifiable by all authorized parties. The platform will also allow everyone to have access and control over all their information and actions in a simple and understandable manner. They can make appointments with a touch, share records with a swipe, compare prices, utilize all available discounts, manage prescriptions and interactions, view personalized care information, coordinate care among providers, make accurate payments and manage their benefits.

Building a community of developers, partners, and resellers to continually expand the platform and apply collective intelligence, Solve.Care believes it can revolutionize the healthcare industry. With the latest advances in blockchain technology and our experience in healthcare coordination, health and human services and healthcare benefits, Solve.Care believes it has designed a platform that will redefine healthcare for individuals, employers, providers, administrators, insurers and government agencies around the world.

Care.Wallet: designed as a blockchain app to help patients and providers to communicate and manage care. Care.Wallet houses Care.Cards and Care.Coins that put the consumer in full control over information and actions.

Care.Cards: built in applications inside the Care.Wallet. Care.Cards are equivalent to apps in an app store that can be downloaded from the Care.Marketplace. builds intelligence into the platform to automate healthcare administration, effectively coordinate care between multiple stakeholders, handle complex billing transactions and deliver personalize information to the wallet holders.

Care.Coin: the payment token used within Solve.Care. Care.Coin can remove a lot of the risk and reduce cost from the 3rd party
payment model by providing transparency, immutable replay and accountability which will eliminate the majority of fraud, abuse and waste.

Care.Vault: designed to organize and manage the data within the Solve.Care platform and from external sources as well as manage access.

Care.Protocol: connects and synchronizes wallets, cards, and coins between stakeholders, to coordinate care and automate transactions in a revolutionary new approach. Care.Protocol handles all communications and synchronizes wallets, cards, coins and client systems. With the Care.Protocol there isn’t a need for a centralized record keeper.

Solve.Care seeks to provide the following benefits to individuals:

Give you complete control and immediate access to all of your healthcare records and the ability to give access to anyone you choose instantly

Make all of your medical history secure without anyone able to access your records without your permission

Give you access to how much healthcare procedures will cost beforehand

Make it nearly impossible for fraud or overcharged by your healthcare providers

Make it so that you never need to call your insurance company for verification

Token

CAN is an ERC20 token with a fixed supply of 1 billion. Currently, CAN is in presale with a 15% discount with a price of $0.085. The public Token sale starting on March 31st will have a price of $0.10. There will be 350 million tokens available for sale, with a soft cap of $3 million and hard cap of $29.5 million. All unsold tokens will be burned. Visit the following link for information regarding the token sale.

The token allocation is as follows:

35% Pre-sale and ICO

20% Community

18% Team (Vested schedule of 36 months)

15% Growth & Acquisitions

9% Long-term foundation budget

3% Token sale expenses

Team

The Solve.Care team and advisors consist of more than 50 industry professionals that come with a wealth of experience in healthcare, blockchain, and business. A complete list of the team and advisors are listed on Solve.Care website along with their Linkedin profiles..

The team is led by Pradeep Goel, who is also CEO of Ukrsoft (acquired by Solve.Care Foundation), CEO of EngagePoint, Inc. and CIO of Noridian BlueCross BlueShield of North Dakota. Pradeep Goel has built four healthcare IT companies and has been at the top of INC500 fastest growing companies lists multiple times. Pradeep is also on the 100 most promising entrepreneurs worldwide, according to Goldman Sachs CEO. He has worked closely with insurance companies, employers, benefit administrators, and multiple U.S. government projects related to healthcare reform such as Medicaid, Children health insurance, Medicare, SNAP, TANF, mental health and more.

The firm is also partnered with Ambisafe, Foxtail Marketing, ARPI (American Research and Policy Institute) and Juscutum Attorneys Association.

Verdict

Solve.Care has already made a key acquisition and collaborated with a major-league partner. In early 2017, Solve.Care acquired Ukrsoft, a long-standing research,and development partner. Ukrsoft has successfully addressed worked with some major clients, such as Delta Airlines, Boeing, Department of Defense and many more.

The Solve.Care Foundation has already signed on a huge customer – a U.S.-based care delivery network that will use their product as a provider of performance payments. It’s a multi-year contract with a highly reputable organization whose charter is perfectly in alignment with the Solve.Care platform and mission. This healthcare delivery organization is responsible for managing care for 250,000 families, 5,000 providers, and 200+ facilities. Furthermore, the Solve.Care coin is expected to be the first real healthcare currency that will be used for proof of service and payments between doctors and patients. With the team and advisors not fully vested for 2-3 years, Solve.Care appears to be in it for the long haul.

Risks

Although the use of proceeds is clearly shown percentage wise in each category (sales and marketing, infrastructure and project management, etc.), there aren’t any details of how the funds will be used within the categories. -2.5

The launch of the platform isn’t scheduled to be released until after the ICO is complete (Q2 2018). -2

Although the CEO is highly qualified, it is unclear whether this project will have his full attention. As we highlighted in the Team section, he is currently serving in executive management positions for a number of organizations. -0.25

Growth Potential

A strong team of over 50 members and an impressive list of advisers. +5

The project has already announced a partnership with a company in the United States with 250,000 clients. +3.5

The U.S. alone spent more than $3 trillion on healthcare in 2017. With Solve.Care to target the global market, only a small percentage is needed for great revenue potential. +3

Disposition

Solve.Care warrants a score of 6.75 out of 10. With drastic price increases in healthcare, Solve.Care has the potential to shine if it achieves its vision of integrating into the healthcare system using blockchain technology to lower cost, reduce fraud and increase efficiency.

Important: Never invest (trade with) money you can't afford to comfortably lose. Always do your own research and due diligence before placing a trade. Read our Terms & Conditions here. Trade recommendations and analysis are written by our analysts which might have different opinions. Read my 6 Golden Steps to Financial Freedom here. Best regards, Jonas Borchgrevink.

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ICO Analysis: Friendz

Friendz connects brands with their community of users to promote “word of mouth” marketing. Unlike a majority of ICOs, the company has already been in business since 2016. They’re using the ICO as an opportunity to incorporate blockchain technology into their platform to automate picture validation and reward distribution (more on this later).

The team wants Friendz Coins (FDZ), the platform’s native token, to be the currency of choice for companies to use in engagement with their target audience. The main idea is to reward content creators for promoting brands that they love and are engaged with.

The Friendz platform includes three types of actors: brand clients, users, and approvers.

Brand Clients

Brand Clients, like Nestle and Uber, create and purchase campaigns on the platform. They set the budget range, target users, and social network distribution, among other important criteria. These campaigns are then presented to the Friendz users who can choose to participate for FDZ rewards.

Friendz makes it easy for brand clients to track key performance indicators (KPIs) of their campaigns in real-time through their specific dashboard.

Users

As a user, you participate in Friendz by creating content for the brand clients.

From the mobile app, you scroll through a list of campaigns and choose one that you like. You then snap a picture following the campaign’s guidelines, add a hashtag or two, and upload it. Each one of your pictures is rated from 1-5 stars by community members based on its quality.

Taking high-quality photos has a few advantages. The higher the rating your photo receives, the greater your FDZ reward. Consistently taking highly-rated photographs also brings you better campaign opportunities and priority access to campaigns over users with a lower rating. The amount of your photos’ reach and overall interaction is also used to determine your rating as a user.

Approvers

Approvers are highly qualified users that screen each photo to ensure that they follow the guidelines of the campaign. Once a minimum number of approvers accepts the photo, it’s automatically posted to the user’s social media accounts.

Any User can become an approver after participating in a certain number of campaigns with a high approval rating. Like normal users, approvers also have rankings but are instead determined by the accuracy of their approvals. This is similar to the reputation system that Augur uses. If their approval rating drops below a certain threshold, they’ll no longer be an approver.

Approvers receive FDZ rewards for accurately approving user photos. Although this process is currently running on the Friendz platform, the team will be integrating it with the blockchain to make it more accurate and efficient.

Token

FDZ is an ERC20 token and the primary currency on the Friendz platform. The team will create a maximum of 1.5 billion FDZ tokens during the ICO with no additional creations after it’s over.

You can use the token for a multitude of things in-app including:

Service and campaign discounts

Visibility and exposure promotions

Blockchain-based games

Merchandise store

Coupons and gift cards

Brand partnership purchases

Friendz is allocating 15%-30% of their revenue to buy back tokens from the market in order to transfer them to users. This adds a consistent demand to the market and demonstrates that the company believes in the value of the token.

Team

Friendz began in 2016 and has grown their team to over 30 members. Showing some success already, the company has previously raised €500 thousand and made over €1.2 million in revenue.

Alessandro Cadoni, Cecilia Nostro, and Daniele Scaglia lead the team as co-founders. Although they don’t have much blockchain experience, they have solid advisors to help. The Friendz advisor board is also involved with other notable blockchain projects like Eidoo and Gnosis.

The company has worked with over 200 clients – Disney, Reebok, Mattel, Warner Bros, and Best Western, to name a few.

Tokens and Distribution

The FDZ token sale starts on March 1st at 10 AM (UTC+1) and will proceed for 3 weeks or until the 750,000,000 FDZ ($50,250,000) hard cap is reached.

The ICO also has a minimum goal of 50,000,000 FDZ ($3,350,000). If the team doesn’t raise this amount in 3 weeks, they’ll refund all ICO contributors.

You can purchase 10 FDZ for $0.67 during the ICO. But, if you participate early, you’ll receive a discount based on a sliding scale:

First Hour: 40% discount

First Day: 20% discount

First Week: 10% discount

50% of the total token supply will be distributed to ICO participants while the team only receives 5%. However, there’s a 20% reserve fund that’s slotted for “future financing and team reward. So, the team may end up with more than the original 5%.

The tokens sold during the First Hour as well as the ones allocated to the team, advisors, and reserve fund vest over a twelve-month period. Each month, 1/12 of those tokens will be released to the appropriate people.

One-year is a fairly short vesting period; however, because the company has been operating for a couple years now, this shouldn’t be a huge concern.

The team plans on using the proceeds from the ICO as follows:

50.0% – Business marketing and development

20.0% – Personnel and professionals

15.0% – Development

10.0% – General and administrative expenses

5.0% – Other

With an already established product and user base, it makes sense that the team will spend the majority of funds on marketing and business development.

Verdict

Friendz is an established marketing and advertising company with a proven track record. Similar to Rentberry, the team is just incorporating blockchain technology into their platform – not starting from scratch.

It’s impressive that the company has already passed its breakeven point and is profitably running. This should give you confidence that the social, “word-of-mouth” model that the FDZ token is built on is a solid foundation.

Even though the team isn’t comprised of blockchain experts, they’ve brought on some advisors with significant experience in the space.

Risks

Crowded market. There are a host of companies, both traditional and blockchain-related, in the digital marketing industry. It may be tough for Friendz to continue growing at their current pace in such a saturated space. (-2)

Nothing revolutionary. There’s no “wow” factor to what Friendz is doing. With ICOs having such a high inherent risk, it may make more sense to look at something tackling a bigger problem. (-2)

The mercy of third-parties. Facebook’s recent advertising guideline changes and the ever-evolving digital media landscape could hinder Friendz in the long run. (-1)

Growth Potential

Proven idea. Most importantly, Friendz is already successful. Investing in a company that’s already profitable eliminates a lot of risk. (+6)

Virality. The platform is built around social sharing and virality. As more people use the app and share content, the company should ideally see exponential growth. (+4)

Token terms. The small percentage of tokens allocated to the team and buy-back program give me less suspicion that there’s any funny business going on. (+2)

Disposition

Friendz receives a total score of +7 out of 10. The team, product, and token are solid and look to have minimal downside risk compared to other ICO investments. The company isn’t trying to drastically change the world through a decentralized internet or financial institution overthrow. Instead, they’re tackling a fairly large industry that probably won’t be going anywhere anytime soon.

Although this probably won’t be a home-run 50x return, it could easily by a solid single or double.

Investment Details

Type: Utility

Symbol: FDZ

Platform: Ethereum

Crowdsale: Mar. 1, 2018

Minimum Investment: 0.1 ETH

Price: 1 FDX = 0.067 U.S.

Hard Cap: 750 million FDZ

Payments Accepted: ETH

Restrictions Barred from Participating: United States

The Friendz token sale starts on March 1st, 2018 and runs for three weeks. You can find more information about it here.

Important: Never invest (trade with) money you can't afford to comfortably lose. Always do your own research and due diligence before placing a trade. Read our Terms & Conditions here. Trade recommendations and analysis are written by our analysts which might have different opinions. Read my 6 Golden Steps to Financial Freedom here. Best regards, Jonas Borchgrevink.

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4.4 stars on average, based on 10 rated postsAlex Moskov is a writer and entrepreneur with a passion for building and creating awesome things. Alex has experience in music tech startups, digital marketing, and cryptocurrency investing.

ICO Analysis: Skraps

A growing number of statistics is showing that very few people save anything at all for their retirement. In a study conducted by Bankrate, it was discovered that from the age of 30, less than half of all Americans save more than 5% of their annual salary. What’s more, 20% of Americans in the same age group admitted that they don’t have savings whatsoever.

One possible explanation for this could be that many people don’t feel they have the money or the knowledge to save and make investments.

One solution to this problem is micro-investing – a way of investing that allows people to invest only what they can afford, which is, in many cases unfortunately, quite small amounts.

There are a few mobile apps currently on the market that aims to fulfill this purpose. One of the most popular at the moment is Acorns – an app that automatically invests the user’s spare change from card purchases into stocks and bonds. Acorns has successfully attracted nearly $100 million in investments from leading venture capital firms.

Designed in the same vein, Skraps is an upcoming micro-investing app that will invest a user’s spare change not in stocks, but in cryptocurrencies. By only investing spare change from purchases of everyday goods and services, a service like this may appeal to those who want to get into cryptocurrencies but lack any investment capital to start out with.

Although still not without risk, the concept appears sound and it has been proven popular with the Acorns app. With that said, the actual results will depend on the team’s ability to carry out the project, bring the app to the market, and attract users.

Token

The native token of the platform is SKRP, an ERC-20 token that is intended to serve as the currency within the app. It will be used to pay for user fees, as well as to pay those who earn commission from publicly sharing their well-performing portfolios, known as copy-investing.

The user fee as outlined in the white paper is 5% of the user’s profits per month. Likewise, if the user makes a loss one month, the fee for that month is waived.

Team

Unfortunately, the team behind Skraps appear to have limited experience, particularly when it comes to blockchain technology. The two co-founders have no blockchain experience as far as we can see, and also have very little relevant experience outside of the blockchain field.

In addition to the founder, the team consists of a few largely unknown advisors and blockchain experts, some of whom have been involved in the blockchain space since 2016.

The website offers no further information into the experience of the team members other than a link to each respective team members’ LinkedIn profile.

However, considering the large amount of low-quality ICO’s coming out these days, the team still deserves credit for making their LinkedIn profiles available on the website for public scrutiny.

Verdict

As a micro-investing platform, Skraps could be well-suited for those new to investing, and those who have limited funds available. The method of investing spare change by rounding up card purchases is a viable one, and the concept has been proven by other successful players.

The platform provides a solution to anyone who lacks the discipline to put aside funds to invest on their own, and who wants to get invested in cryptocurrencies. The fact the the entire investment process is automated also means the product could be a good fit for those who don’t have the knowledge or the time to invest on their own.

One of the main drawbacks of the Skraps app, and thus this ICO, is the team’s lack of experience. The team appears to be young and largely inexperienced, and completely unknown in the industry. They are also lacking any high-profile advisors to help bring publicity and legitimacy to the ICO.

Risks

Although cryptocurrency- and blockchain-related experience is difficult to quantify with the field being as new as it is, the founders are young, and experience is certainly called into question. The rest of the team also appears to lack any relevant experience to pull off a project of this magnitude. -4

Skraps is not a new concept, with Acorns and similar applications already having shown great success. We don’t know if the Skraps team is planning to use their competitors’ accomplishments as a launch-pad, or whether the new company will struggle to establish itself in the field of micro-investing. -1

During the token sale, Skraps management changed the structure of the token pricing model, which can be viewed as a lack of foresight and an inability to plan effectively. -1

Growth Potential

According to a statement from the team on Medium, they hit their soft cap of $1 million within the first 10 hours of the token sale, which is respectable in the current ICO environment. +3

Cryptocurrency is an industry less than a decade old, which has shown considerable growth in the latter half of its existence. With new and seasoned investors alike considering cryptocurrencies an attractive investment, Skraps could be offering the right service at the right time. +1

The concept has been proven to work in traditional financial markets by global players like Acorns attracting large venture capital investments. +2

The portfolio-based approach within the app has a two-fold benefit. In addition to allowing users to select their own level of risk, seasoned traders can make their portfolio available for others to copy and earn commission from their followers. +2

The Skraps team is highly responsive on Telegram for any questions from the community. Again, with many low-quality ICOs coming out these days, that’s a step in the right direction. +2

Disposition

From an overall perspective, Skraps appears to have a solid concept, but a team that is lacking in experience. We’ve arrived at an overall score of 4 out of 10 for Skraps.

Disclaimer: The author owns bitcoin, ethereum and other cryptocurrencies. He holds investment positions in the coins, but does not engage in short-term trading. The author has no investment in Skraps.

Featured image from Pixabay.

Important: Never invest (trade with) money you can't afford to comfortably lose. Always do your own research and due diligence before placing a trade. Read our Terms & Conditions here. Trade recommendations and analysis are written by our analysts which might have different opinions. Read my 6 Golden Steps to Financial Freedom here. Best regards, Jonas Borchgrevink.

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4.1 stars on average, based on 19 rated postsFredrik Vold is an entrepreneur, financial writer, and technical analysis enthusiast. He has been working and traveling in Asia for several years, and is currently based out of Beijing, China. He mainly follows the stock and forex markets, and is always looking for the next great alternative investment opportunity.

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